


It's Not the Fall That's Going to Kill You

by florahart



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Clint does use his words until he can't any more, Dysfunctional Relationships, Getting Together, Happy Ending, Healthy Relationships, I do break them but then I fix them, M/M, Phil has issues, Phil sometimes makes pride and self-loathing an art form, SHIELD’s psych department has its work cut out for it, breaking up, fallout from trauma, happy ending honest, mention of Coulson/notClint, not particularly AOS-compliant, shocking lack of porn, temporary (canon-compliant) character death, vague mention of unfocused suicidal inclination
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-01
Updated: 2014-11-01
Packaged: 2018-02-23 11:51:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2546489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florahart/pseuds/florahart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing is, Phil knows Clint is always going to be the guy who jumps off buildings, and he loves him the way he is, and these two things together mean he cannot be in this relationship any more.  Even though it is going to <i>suck</i> to end things.  Even though it actually feels like it might kill him.</p><p>So he makes the hard call and tries to go on with his life.</p><p>Except, it turns out the alternative to living with a sniper who's practically a superhero is worse, and then way worse, and then everything <i>really</i> goes to hell.</p><p>Fortunately, the universe somehow gives them another chance, and Phil isn't throwing a good thing away twice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Not the Fall That's Going to Kill You

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Wyoming Knott for beta assistance and to Max72 for 1. art that I love to pieces and 2. helping me solve my title block which was totally out of control. 
> 
> I think I have tagged for anything likely to be a trigger, but please feel free to comment if you think there is something I missed.

  
[](http://tinypic.com?ref=1oae4n)

* * *

What Phil is about to say and do is profoundly unfair, and he knows it. But things can't stay the way they are, and he's been working up to it for weeks. Months. Ever since they started the relationship in earnest, if he's honest, although it’s not like he meant to be this way before they ever began. It’s more like he realized in retrospect it’s always been a thing, and then once he realized, it became something he had to do. Or rather, he hasn't _done_ a damn thing, but he's been trying to psych himself up, make himself ready to cope, and he never should have started this if he couldn't see it through, and in any event, all he's really doing is hastening the inevitable.

God, this is going to suck.

He pauses with his hand on the doorknob, collects himself a little, and goes in. And if he doesn't start, he never will, so he does none of the usual hellos or familiar greeting rituals, and pushes forward. "Clint, we need to talk."

Clint looks up from the crossword he insists on doing with a pen even though he has to write over various letters a lot and the completed grids look like they've gone ten rounds with an inkpad. His face is open and welcoming as it always is when it’s just the two of them, and Phil feels his resolve take the hit, but it's not going to crumble. "Yeah?" He must see Phil steeling himself, because his expression turns serious. "Hey, what's going on?"

"I think I--Clint, you know I love you and that hasn't and won't change, but this isn't working. I can't stay in this relationship."

Clint laughs. "I love you, too. I think that's pretty much the definition of why we are _in_ this relationship, isn't it? What, do you need me to pick up my socks better or something?"

Phil swallows hard. Clint thinks he's joking. Fuck. "Nothing like that. Clint, I'm serious. I can't do this any longer."

"Uh. This is sudden?" Clint stills, and his eyes go quiet, but he doesn't try to argue against an unknown; he waits for Phil to elaborate so he'll have enough information to comment.

"It's not. I just haven't--shit." Phil knows very well that against everything any shrink would have predicted ten years ago, of the two of them, Clint is the one that is the more emotionally stable. Wait, no, scratch that, Clint has taken the availability of SHIELD's psych division seriously over the last decade and has grown into one of the most emotionally healthy people Phil _knows_ , which is just going to make things harder right now because if he were as stunted and closed-off as people usually expect when they know his story (he never was, but maybe he was close, once upon a time), then either there would be an epic brawl brewing in the room, or there would just be hurt and stomping and a lasting silence. 

Actually, that capacity for reflection and growth from a truly shitty starting point, while still doing the job Clint does, the job which asks for cockiness and selflessness and extreme failure of self-interest on a regular basis while expecting the players to get in the moral and ethical mud and come up whole every day, that's one of the things Phil fell for in the first place. He takes a breath. "It's not sudden, Clint. Not to me.”

“Well, it is to me. Wanna toss a few details my way so I have any idea at all what you're talking about?” Clint is still motionless, but Phil can see the tension in him, the way he's building toward being pissed, and that'll help. He needs that.

“It's nothing new, Clint. It's always been a problem, but I've been pretending I could live with it, and I can't.”

“Well that narrows it right down.”

“You're always going to throw yourself off buildings, and I'm always going to have to ask you to. You're amazing, and you're beautiful, and I can't ask you to stop being who you are and doing what you do, which means the fact I can't cope isn't you, it's..." He makes a face at the cliché, but finishes quietly, “I can't stay."

Clint stands now and approaches Phil slowly. "Hey, I can stop jumping if I gotta." 

Phil mutely shakes his head. 

"You're really serious right now? This is really how you want to do this?" Clint's eyebrows have gone up and his body language is muddled confusion, but he's still there, still talking, still making Phil keep telling him. Fucking psych department. 

"Afraid I am. We're, we have to be, done." Phil struggles to inject enough coldness into his tone that Clint will hear him being all business, although he's reasonably sure he falls well short.

"And your mind is made up, which is just fucking obnoxious. Because for fuck's sake, I honestly can retire, if that's all there is. I don’t have to have this job. Hell, we got savings; I don’t have to have _any_ job. We can get a country home with a pool and I can be your fucking cabana boy who teaches tumbling and archery to kids at the community center while you're away on business. You can spoil me and bring me new toys, and I can cook you dinner. I'll be positively fucking domestic, if that's the only thing."

Phil shakes his head tightly, closes his eyes. "Clint, you love your job."

"Not as much as I love you."

"But a lot, and you're good at it, and you should have someone who is comfortable--look, you can't quit because then you won't be you and you'd know every day someone less able was in your place, and it wouldn't make either of us happy, so no, that's off the table. I thought I could do this, could handle it because I knew what I was in for, but it turns out, I need to do the high-risk stuff we do and then come home to someone who will always be present and, and calm, and completely outside of it all."

"So, besides that you seem to think you're a better judge of which option would make me happier overall than I am, which I guess you know is paternalistic bullshit, besides that though, you want me to keep my job and you want to keep yours, but because they are both dangerous as fuck, even though you love me and I love you, we can't be together, in your mind. Even though when we are together, we build our own stability and we're better for it and--"

"Yes."

"You're _so_ totally full of shit on this, Phil. You know no civilian is going to be able to tolerate the life you lead, and you know that means your choices are someone like me, and no one. You're choosing to be alone rather than keep me, which, hey, that's not stomping on my abandonment issues or anything."

"Clint, no, it's not you. It's me. It's _really, really_ me."

"Uh-huh." Clint starts to reach for him, then stops and put his hands on his hips instead. "I'm sorely tempted to try and change your mind by sucking your brains out through your dick or something, but that's manipulative as shit, so no." He rocks a little on the balls of his feet, the only tell that he's not nearly as pulled-together as he looks (which is fair; Phil feels like he's being flayed somewhere inside his chest), but he has expressed many times in the three and a half years since their first admittedly drunken kiss his clear and solid opinion about how important it is to fight fair if they're going to fight, and even though his eyes show he absolutely is considering breaking his own rules, in the end, he shakes his head. "Yeah, damn it, that would be douchey, and so was the abandonment comment. Sorry. I will, however, try to talk you out of it tomorrow, after we've both slept on it. I'm going to bunk with Nat, which, just to be clear, is not in any way a statement that I accept this proposition; also, when I said sleep on it, I meant, after I spend the next 24 hours or so marshaling every resource I can find because this? This is bullshit, Phil." 

He goes back and picks up his newspaper and then walks into their bedroom and leaves the door open as he tosses a change of clothes in a duffel. He glares a little as he steps into the bathroom to grab his toothbrush, but he doesn't say anything and neither does Phil because his resolve is feeling pretty mushy at this point, and if he speaks Clint will definitely know it. He's having a hard enough time keeping it off his face.

The part of this he hates the most is, he's thought this through, a lot, and besides that Clint will be better off (paternalism aside, he _knows_ it's true) without Phil growing to full-out resent what he does, it's also the right call for his own self-preservation even though all he wants it to pull Clint close and apologize a hundred times and never leave his side. It hurts, and his legendary stoicism is _thisclose_ to faltering, which it never does. He's aware, of course, that he's never going to stop feeling his heart exit through his throat when Clint does what he does, but damn it, he _has_ to find a way to make it so he isn't working on a bleeding ulcer all the time over it, and he's hoping that somehow, some way, he'll find someone who he can love _and_ who can be a stabilizing influence, someone who will never smell like smoke and dust, someone who will never suffer fourteen broken bones in one incident, someone who will never need three pints of blood while his femoral artery gets stitched back together in a moving helicopter that's being shot at.

Yeah, it's unlikely, but that's what Phil needs and it's what he'd going to look for. He can't be in this relationship any more.

Phil stands in the living room, watching Clint pack up stuff for the night--and really _just_ for the night; he's not even taking more reading material than the book he's two-thirds of the way through, and only spare socks and underwear because they're part of his workout clothes. Phil can't help but track everything that goes into the bag, and can't help that it means he's cataloging everything that isn't. Finally, after a painful and endless three minutes, Clint is packed. 

"I mean it, Phil," he says as he comes back to the living room with the duffel. "24 hours, tops, and you better hope you have a better argument than you've given here, because, and I know I'm repeating myself, this one is bullshit." He steps in close and quick, before Phil realizes he's going to, and presses a kiss to Phil's lips before he turns to go. "So yeah, I'm pissed, and I love you anyway and in our line of work I fucking know better than to walk away without saying it. Sorry, unfair, but suck on that while you try to improve that clusterfuck of a thesis statement until you realize it's fatally fucking flawed." 

His go-bag, he looks at in passing, then glances at Phil, then very deliberately leaves right where it is inside the door as he goes out. 

Which is fine; he's definitely aware that if they managed to get called out tonight, Phil would bring it to him. Because part of the reason Nick has never gotten his panties in a bunch about their relationship is that both of them have promised they are grownups and it will never get in the way of the job.

And because there is no way that when Clint jumps off another building, or sets the one he's on on fire, or leaps onto a passing train going over a high bridge in icy conditions, or whatever damn thing he'd do, Phil would never want him to have anything less than everything he needs to have the best chance at surviving.

Twenty-four hours, though, is probably not going to turn out to be long enough to state the problem and solution any better, which means Phil has already fucking failed because what he _meant_ to do was make Clint mad enough to stop thinking and agree they were done. He failed by _miles_ , apparently. So as soon as the door closes, Phil starts coming up with a Plan B. Which he would have already had in reserve if his head wasn't on sideways because contingency planning is kind of his thing, and isn't that perfect; he's making life choices that conflict with his life. He sits down heavily and puts his head in his hands and gives himself thirty seconds to breathe before he starts working the problem.

The quickest and easiest, although also the one that totally fails all definitions of personal courage, is to simply avoid the conversation, and that can't happen while he's here, so he won't be. He calls Nick, arranges for a training mission out of the area with a couple of juniors so new they won't be aware of his relationship with Clint, and packs his shit methodically, checking his phone each time it buzzes but not answering because it's always Natasha. Finally, he answers, once, texting: _I know you have to keep trying, going to bed, leave it for morning_. This doesn't stop her from continuing to text at him every few minutes, mostly to tell him he's a fucking idiot, but it probably buys him some time. By nine, every scrap that's indisputably his personal property, everything he's owned in the last 32 months since they actually moved in together, is in boxes or bags, and he calls Jade in logistics to _quietly_ arrange for someone to come fetch it all for storage. By eleven, he's checked in to a shitty motel half an hour out of the way of anywhere for a few hours of shut-eye, and at three, he's up and ignoring texts from Natasha again (it's probably unwise, since she will start following up in person at some point, but he has a head start). At 3:15, he's on the road.

Clint's bag, he drops with Sitwell before he hops onto the plane. Sitwell just looks at him like he's out of his fucking mind (thanks, Jasper, like I don't already know I'm compromised beyond recovery, he doesn't say out loud) and shakes his head.

Phil nods, points out that the exercise is need-to-know (as if this will do much beyond slow Clint down if he decides to come after, but it might take him a few hours to decide to try, and by then, they'll have swapped out modes of transport, at least) and goes up to sit with one of the newbies who is also their pilot for the first leg.

Clint is probably going to track him down and kill him for being a coward before he does it for hurting him, but maybe that will work to his advantage; maybe it will just mean Clint will decide he doesn't need Phil's emotional incompetence anyway and then, presto bingo, no need for Plan B. Perfect.

Christ. He hasn't been incompetent at basically anything he's tried in _years_ \--no, he hasn't always been immaculate on the first try at anything, but that's a different matter; ability to acquire competence or even excellence at everything he puts his hand to is sort of his trademark.

Except at this. Except this relationship that somehow unlike every other one he's ever had didn't fall to dust six months in. He even usually knows how to finesse an emotional situation--such as the previous ends of relationships, for instance--into something clean and workable, but Clint is his Achilles' heel. Actually, no, Clint turns his whole body into one big exposed tendon and is also the archer than pierces him. 

Or something. He feels like that's a little too poetic, but yes, Clint reduces him to fucking poetry, and it's not a coincidence that English 157, Intro to Poetry, was the only class he ever had to change to pass/fail to preserve his grade-point. God. He pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and finger, then gets back to work.

He spends the flight studiously ignoring his feelings and preparing to be the agent in charge while the juniors acquire other transport for them and jump through a series of hoops that are half his inventions of the morning and half standard to the kind of training exercise they're on, not that most of them will know the difference at this point in their careers. His key ring feels too heavy in his pocket with the addition of the brass key to the storage unit, and his eyes feel too heavy in his face because his life is imploding, but he knows how to channel irritations and frustrations into successful ops, so he puts all that into his planning process and tells his phone to send both Clint and Natasha to voicemail.

He's being an asshole, but it has to be done and Phil is a past master at handling the difficult jobs with brutal efficiency and a poker face to break the bank, so that's what he's going to do.

It only takes three days for his phone to stop buzzing every fifteen minutes, and ten more for him to stop expecting it to. Clint doesn't come after him, and when he gets back from the exercise there's a terse note in his office that only says, _Fine. You win. But when I'm back from Finland, we still need to talk. Like adults who use their goddamn words._

Phil pathetically folds the note and tucks it into his wallet, then sets about arranging to be away again by the time Clint returns.

Then he makes sure Natasha is on a long-term op, too, because he likes his testicles right where they are, and until this is settled with Clint, that's not a given if she lays hands on him.

Then he starts looking through the files of mid-level agents for snipers and infiltrators that will make a good team, because he's going to need one, and the team he loves and knows is definitely not going to be ready to work with him outside of a fucking global catastrophe scenario any time soon. Hell, maybe even then.

It's just as well he's so good at efficiency he can take care of the day-to-day without much of his attention engaged, because he's an emotional wreck and his life is absurd. It occurs to him he could just fix it, but then, doesn't this all just go to show that he's compromised? He can't manage neutrality because Clint is too important to him, and that's a problem. 

It _is_.

* * *

The search for a new team yields several potential opportunities, and Phil starts pairing them up, mix and match, to see what's what. This is something he's always been decent at, knowing who will fit and who will clash, so he hopes he'll get somewhere fairly quickly.

Grant Ward, he comes to find, is a young but competent sniper and a good agent. He's one of Garrett's, so it's maybe a little surprising that his teamwork, like Clint's, leaves something--scratch that, leaves _everything_ \--to be desired, and for a horrible moment when Phil makes that comparison in his head he finds himself worrying that he's gone and replaced Clint with Clint, like somehow that's going to make him want Ward in his bed and in his apartment (not that he has an apartment at the moment; he's living at HQ in one of the boxes with beds that serve as temporary quarters and are currently serving him as semi-permanent ones) and in his life. But Ward is nothing like Clint except for these two specific issues, and when he's made the shot, he reports back, does his paperwork, and exits the room sharp and fast. Phil works with him once on an op outside of Kaiserslautern and again several weeks later in Bahrain. Neither op is special in any way, and in both cases their interaction with Willis (in Germany) and Cartwright (Middle East) is nothing worth recapturing; he hasn't found his team.

Natasha checks in with him after Bahrain, cold and furious, and it's all he can do not to ask after Clint. Not that he's not keeping an eye on him, obviously, but she'll know the details, the ones he has no right to any more. He mostly manages to keep his thoughts to himself because there's no way she'd tell him anyway, and she might garrote him for asking.

Chiang jumps off a roof when their intel proves shitty in Davos. Davos is hardly the sort of city that has tall buildings, so she only drops some eighteen feet and it's into soft nearly-muddy ground so most of the damage is to the landscaping, but Phil's throat goes dry and he has a hell of a time not chewing her to pieces. Because damn it, the leap was the right call; she'd have been spotted in another second and there was no better option. And also, she jumped a hedge and shimmied her way up into the beams of the adjacent property and still made the shot, so chewing her to pieces is definitely not indicated. He completes the after-action report and notes for her file that her work was exemplary. Damn it again.

He doesn't work with her after that; the jump ended well, but then, so did the first one of Clint's he'd seen, and then the next one had been ugly. No use taking chances.

Ahmbareiya and Park are actually an excellent team, and when Phil writes his report, he recommends they be assigned together often. Just... not with him. When he next checks in on them, they're working under Maria with Natasha in as a liaison occasionally, and he can see her hand in Park's approach in the field. He's slowly replacing his whole team, including himself, and he sort of wonders if he's even relevant any more. 

Delia Call is a great sniper, but a shitty tactician when the plan has to be rebuilt in the middle, and considering that this middle happens not thirty miles from where she went to school, Phil's pretty sure that's a bad sign. He recommends her for a post in DC, where tactics probably won't be an issue any time soon, and privately tells her that she should seek additional opportunities for tactical planning practice. He's glad when she takes the notion as he intends it, as a way to get better. 

Kyle Williams can pull all sorts of trivia out of his ass and turn it into a working idea in a moment, and he's a sweetheart to boot, but he's only an above-average sniper, and he not only misses the shot that would have prevented Kuriya from taking a shattering bullet to the shin that will lead to months of work to walk again, but misses in a manner which draws attention toward her in the first place. Phil can forgive that, because shit, no one else is Clint, and so can Kuriya, who looks like a delicate flower but is utterly not one, but Williams himself can't get there, at least not quickly, and takes himself off the roster indefinitely. Phil hears him out and tells him until he can learn ruthlessness, this is always going to kill him, which unsurprisingly is not news, and then he recommends him for a slot as an analyst and suggests he consider trying to turn his improvisational skills into something he can teach.

By the time five months have rolled around--twenty-three weeks, of which a sum of only twenty-seven _days_ have been at home--Phil has come to understand, deeply, exactly why Clint is of the opinion his idea is bullshit. It's because it is. He doesn't have a new team he can rely on, so his stress level is through the roof, and Clint still jumps. And Phil isn't there to back him up, which is the exact opposite of making sure he has everything he could possibly need for a best chance at survival. Instead, he _reads_ about it, _afterwards_ , and because it freaks the fuck out of every handler ever, he reads about it in lurid detail, as though they need to paint the most explicit picture possible so that everyone else who ever sees the story will retroactively share their pain. It's not all that retroactive for Phil, who reads them same day and has taken to ignoring the gnawing, churning sensation in his gut as studiously as he prepares for every op. 

Besides all of that, since he's still busy keeping himself away from both halves of his former team because apparently half a fucking year is not long enough to, what was it, improve his thesis statement? There's been exactly no opportunity to even make a stab at a date, ever, so now he's angry, sad, lonely, and sexually frustrated as hell, all of which is not helped at all by the fact that he dreams about Clint on a regular basis, divided into two roughly equal themes, one of scorching sex so he wakes up hard and unwilling to do anything about it because jerking off over the guy you dumped five months ago over his protests is awful, and the other of Clint's fall/jump/push to a bloody death with no backup, alone and afraid and always sad. He's not sure whether his subconscious is hoping to guilt him into a change of heart, or just drive him crazy. Either way, it’s working, and it’s making him fucking miserable.

Also, though, and equally hard to cope with: Clint is obviously fine without him--he's doing good work, he's writing good paper, and he's putting in a lot of hours with the junior agents on the range and in the tactics classrooms, teaching things Phil wasn't sure anyone knew _how_ to teach--and actually, that's still up in the air; much of what Clint does so well seems to be innate and untrainable talent, but his breakdowns make sense and are bringing up scores, not to his level but significantly. Phil's so proud of his carnival-bred uneducated onetime asset it hurts, although not quite as much as it hurts every other Saturday, when Clint emails: _Still waiting. Still bullshit._. Jasper and Maria say he hasn't moved on, and apparently won't discuss it. With anyone. 

He wonders, briefly, whether this is actually a plot, probably engineered by Natasha, to make him see the error of his ways, but it doesn't matter. He's not having any trouble seeing clearly, and now he just has to figure out how to fix it, because yes, clearly, he needs--well, he _wants_ to un-break up with Clint, but for one thing nothing about how he feels about the danger has resolved, and for another, it seems more than a little egotistical to go back and say, hey, by the way, wanna move back in? And expect Clint to just say okay. Which, no, he _will_ just say okay, because Phil has the equivalent of a couple of advanced degrees in how Clint works and he'd bet money Clint is managing his emotions by simply pretending this is extended undercover work or something; however, as nothing else _has_ changed, it'd also be really unfair. So that leaves putting their working relationship back together and moving on in other ways, which sounds, frankly, terrible, but is the only adult choice, as far as Phil can tell. Except he doesn't know if he can be on Clint's team and not break in two and/or demonstrate a total failure to discern the line between the personal and the professional, such as it is (nonexistent, for them; this is, again, part of the problem). No way to tell which side he’d fall on, either. God.

So he keeps going back out in the field, with Koester and Ryan, or with Germaine and Sandusky, or with, once, Koester and Sandusky (Jesus, never again; there are people who dislike each other and can work together, and then there are people who would probably be okay with watching each other die slowly of acid, and Phil comes away sure he needs to find out what happened that made them the latter, because until someone does that and then figures out how to fix it, they clearly cannot be trusted in the same room), and he keeps being unsatisfied with his life.

He writes an email back to Clint every other Sunday: _I know, I'm working on it, I'm sorry,_ but he never sends it; on the alternate weeks he considers going out, but stays in.

* * *

The fallout and cleanup from the return of Tony Stark from, as both the official story and the watercooler scuttlebutt have it, a cave in Afghanistan is the first mission on which Phil works with Clint again. It's been eight months (thirty-six weeks, so more like eight and a third, but who's counting), and while he has, at least, figured out how to sleep alone again (with a t-shirt on because apparently his body has learned to expect a heat source at his back or pressed close against his chest, and despite his best intentions about finding a different (better, healthier) relationship and therefore a new bed-heating partner, Phil is alone every night when he turns out the light), at this point he's basically one raw nerve about the issue of Clint so the orders aren't exactly his first choice, or his second. But, there's no way out but through, and that poker face has carried him into and out of shit he wouldn't wish on... well, _most_ of his enemies, and he's going to make use of it again.

"Barton," he says, entering the room with brisk steps and crisp pages to slap down onto the table. "This is straightforward and we don't expect to need your bow, but the director would prefer to minimize the risks." He turns the paper around, not that Clint will need any such thing to see clearly, and waits a beat. "Choose your position."

"Oh, I get to _choose?_ " Clint asks. He leans back, legs sprawled wide under the glass table, one arm hooked lazily over the back of the chair, half-finished crossword in front of him. "I thought you and I mostly did that thing where you decide and I cope." 

Phil raises an unimpressed eyebrow. "I believe that's known as 'following orders,' but as you may recall, in the field I prefer to allow you input. Or have you forgotten how to work together? I do realize it's been several weeks since you were last in the field, so you may be out of practice."

And that's just mean, implying that Clint isn't sharp as a finely-honed blade, that he might just forget things if Phil isn't there to hold his hand, because for all Clint's skills and steadiness, he still has deep insecurities about who he used to be. Fortunately, Clint's eyebrow is just as unimpressed, because he sees right through Phil. Because of course he does; what Clint _does_ is see things. So he doesn't rise to the bait, at least not visibly, although Phil does note a tension around his eyes that says he's not a hundred percent sure Phil's deliberate effort to prod isn't _also_ a revelation of something Phil actually believes. Still, his breath in is even and his voice is steady when he answers. "I keep up on all my quals, _Coulson_. I haven't forgotten, and I've been keeping my hand in everywhere it ever was and a few places that are new. I just thought maybe with all the other changes, we had some new protocols for teams _you_ run that maybe you hadn't gotten around to mentioning."

Just then Darrow and Jardin show up, sharply on time where Phil was two minutes early (and Clint was apparently three), and Phil hands over packets to each of them as well.

Clint suggests positions for himself and each of them (including Phil) without a trace of the sullen pissiness from thirty seconds earlier, and with some profoundly unnecessary flexing of triceps as he points, Phil is certain.

All in all, the round has to go to Clint, who is clearly still pissed, who is handling himself like a professional when it counts, and who is, unsurprisingly, still the owner of arms Phil wants to lick for hours.

As it turns out, they don't need Clint's bow, but they do need his eyes, and as one event turns into half a dozen and then more, as Phil becomes a presence in Pepper Potts's life and Tony Stark works out the highest-percentage approaches to driving Phil, and by proxy, Fury, completely insane, as Obadiah Stane goes from suspected creep to known maniac, Phil finds himself counting on Clint's observations as much as he ever did. It's painful and also comfortable, and as Phil isn't into masochism (shut up, he firmly tells the little voice that points out he made this pain on purpose), he doesn't really know what to do with it.

After Stane is blasted to component parts by an overloaded reactor and Stark tells all and sundry he's a fucking superhero (Phil blames himself for not seeing that coming a mile away, especially when Clint’s chuckle in his earbud says maybe it could have been foreseen), Phil takes the stairs to the roof and crosses to sit with his back against the stone ledge next to where Clint's sitting on top of it, legs dangling. "I'm sorry for the disappearing act," Phil says quietly. He's been meaning to say it for a while, but in the middle of the moving and constant clusterfuck that is Stark had seemed like a bad time.

"Yeah, I know. But you still want me to figure out how to move on."

"I want you to be happy, which is going to mean moving on," Phil corrects. "For both of us."

Clint glances at him out of the corner of his eye. "Your methods suck, and just in case I need to actually say this out loud although that's stupid because it should be fucking obvious, I have no plans to move on. I'm not telling you that for guilt purposes. I'm just saying, I have every intention of waiting until you pull your head out, because I am not a dumbass who doesn't know a good thing. Maybe that makes me the idiot everyone thinks, but just, me being a jerk for the first five minutes aside, we're okay, and eventually, we'll be better. I'll move on if and only if I ever see a shred of evidence you're happier alone, and I won't be lying to myself if I see it. But since you seem hell-bent on this asinine side trip on the road to happily ever after, I'll also _leave_ you alone until you say to come home, too. By the way, your 24 hours are up, and your premise is still made of shit." He swings his legs around and stands, then is gone into the stairwell before Phil figures out how to answer him, or for that matter gets his damn face back under control, because listening to Clint calmly, sincerely promising loyalty and permanence is, no surprise here, a little breathtaking.

Civil conversation is nice, he decides, but moving on, he really needs to get on with that, because if he wants Clint to be happy, then he has to get happy first. 

Also, probably they shouldn't work together again for a bit yet. Because Phil isn't a masochist. He isn't. Although the fact they succeeded on this op means maybe he can also work with Natasha without having to watch his own back the whole time.

Maybe.

* * *

Moving on, Phil admits to himself grumpily, comes with a number of remarkably exasperating features.

For example, in order to acquire a new boyfriend, he's going to have go on at least one date. Of some description. Any description.

Jasper, who still has not managed to wipe the you-are-a-fucking-idiot look off his face when it comes to this topic, suggests that probably one important step would be to, oh, maybe consider who he might ask out, or where they might go, or hey, in what publication or service he means to advertise his dateable-ness or interest or whatever.

Not that Phil is having any success mustering up interest, or any ideas, because everything he wants to do, the person that comes to mind for doing it with is Clint.

He is so screwed. His only outlet for his frustration is in dealing with Stark, whom at least he gets to threaten to taze, so that's something, but it's small consolation. He misses Clint, he misses Natasha (although at least finally, _finally_ she's warming a little, largely over a shared frustration with Stark), and he misses stability. 

And the worst part is, he knows he could fix it all, because _still_ , Clint would take him back. As far as Phil can tell, Clint has been out with a few people casually, but in no way that anyone with eyes would read as anything more serious than an uncomplicated orgasm (Phil can’t actually begrudge that, although every time he is aware Clint’s gone out, he pictures—God. He pictures what that looks like and it’s hell), and that means he's still waiting. Still. But Phil didn't get to be Nick's right-hand man without a strong stubborn streak, and apparently he can't work out how to stop having it for five minute. Pride, for the record, is a terrible trait. Terrible.

Finally, fifty-nine weeks into his stupid, stupid Clintless life, he can't believe he's stooping to this, but it's this or OK Cupid and really he needs for his love life (lack of, whatever) not to involve a fucking mythical archer even by association. What he's stooping to is the kind of bar/club thing that's basically a meat market, in a college town, looking to find a pretty kid--old enough, eager enough, and into stable older men. It's not like that's going to work permanently, but it's a place to get his feet wet. Or, more accurately, and he can't quite believe he's even acknowledging this in the privacy of his own head, his dick.

Except it's not. It's too loud, the boy who attaches himself to Phil is muscular, blue-eyed, and a smartass, and while yes, it does end in sex, of a sort (a fast, messy, unsatisfying sort followed by an awkward return to his quarters at ten p.m.), it also ends in Phil being disgusted with himself in the morning. Disgusted with himself like he hasn't been in years. Decades. Not for having sex, but for...shit, he doesn't even know how to quantify or delineate the problem, but the churn in his belly is worse than ever, and the notion of playing out the same game again another time in an effort to find someone he likes is nauseating.

Jesus, maybe he _is_ a masochist.

This is the point at which he does what he should have done in the first place, and makes an appointment with Nguyen-Mills down in Psych. She doesn't do relationship counseling, but maybe she can give him some idea how to get his shit together. Or some idea how to give himself a safe partial lobotomy so he can move on, although even in his own head that seems a little extreme.

* * *

Naturally, his appointment is pre-empted by the appearance of an Einstein-Rosen bridge in the ass end of nowhere, New Mexico, which leads to a four-hour trip in the back of a SHIELD jet seated between Clint and Megan Grimes from logistics.

Grimes has had level-four clearance for ten months, which means she never had clearance to be aware of his and Clint's relationship _sixteen_ months ago when it was, for lack of a better term, active; however, Phil finds it a little worrying that she seems to be totally unaware of the tension between them now. Either that or she's a lot better than he thinks she is. Either way, by the time they start to descend over the desert outside of Alamogordo, Phil's back is one big knot and based on how Clint is holding himself, so is his.

Grimes gets up and dashes away as soon as they're still, but since her job involves getting the command post set up in the first place, Phil is in somewhat less of a hurry. Clint has nowhere to be until there's a perimeter to keep an eye on, so he stays in place as well as logistics and tech clear out and haul their gear with them. 

Finally, Phil leans forward to stand, and Clint clamps a hand down on his thigh. “Hold it.”

“What?”

“Yeah, turn around. And take your fucking jacket off. And do something with your tie.”

Phil arches a brow. “You want me half-dressed? Even if this were something we were going to do, we are not having make-up--”

Clint snorts. “No, we're not, since that would require you to get your head out of your ass first. However, you hurt, I can fix it, I don't like it, and no one is here to see it, so. Jacket off.”

“Seriously?”

“Well, I mean, I can sneak up behind you in ops for a ninja backrub, except in some way that doesn't sound like a stalker, but I doubt you'd like that better. Come on. You know it'll not only feel good, but help the fucking op.”

Phil stares for another moment, then shrugs and pulls his jacket off, setting it on Grimes's abandoned seat. He turns his back to Clint, and then _oh god_ , Clint's hands are magic. Sure, the pressure on the knots in his traps _hurts_ , but in seconds he's found all the worst spots, probably because he knows where they are without thought by now, and Phil feels his shoulders coming down as everything relaxes enough to avoid the tension headache that was certainly going to show up by nightfall. “Thanks,” he mutters as Clint's hands still.

“I'd rather do better,” Clint says. “But I promised not to use cocksucking as a persuasive technique, so.”

Phil's dick thinks that's a fabulous concept, mission or no, and does a little dance to try to tell his brain, but he ignores it. “We're in the field,” he says.

“Oh, so if we weren't?”

“Then we wouldn't be in this position.”

Clint, because he is a sneaky bastard, has his hands on Phil's sides and slides them forward and around, leaning into Phil's back and dropping a kiss on his shoulder during the point-five second microhug he gives him. “Well, anyway, I miss you.” He lets go entirely, and the flesh of Phil's back objects to his absence immediately. “Go on, go be a badass in the face of mysterious weather phenomena.” 

“I'll--” Phil has to swallow and try again, because his mouth has gone dry. “I'll need you on perimeter, to begin with.”

“Yep.” Clint waits for Phil to step away, then stands and grabs his bag out of the bin he'd stowed it in. “See you back at base.” He brushes past Phil in a little bit of a hurry--because even though he obviously has better command of himself than Phil does, it's pretty obvious he can't stand to linger longer—and jogs off the plane and toward the north end of the enclosure that's half built.

Phil remembers, two seconds later, that Clint's back was probably hurting too, but the moment in which to do or say anything about it is gone. God, he's a jackass. Damn it. He composes his face and steps to the door of the plane. He has a meteorological mystery to handle.

* * *

Of course, the path to resolving the whole mess comes out of nowhere. Or at least, Phil doesn't see it coming—he'd probably find it worrying, because preparing for every eventuality is definitely his _thing_ , but he's too tired of stressful loneliness to feel worried about his own psychological state. Which is of itself a little fucked up. 

It starts like this: “Haven't you heard?” Clint's leaning in Phil's office door at, Christ, it's after six already, again. And Clint is leaning in just like he ever used to, shoulder against the jamb as his head alone enters the room.

“Hear what?” Phil's proud of not actually flinching at Clint's presence, because ever since the jet-seat backrub, it feels like he doesn't fit in his own damn skin every time he sees him. He really should call Nguyen-Mills back and reschedule that fucking appointment, but it's taking all his emotional energy to go on a handful more terrible dates and definitely not have any sex with any of them because self-loathing has a ceiling and he's at it, and then to keep himself together on the job the rest of the time.

“They found Captain Amer--”

“ _What?_ ” Phil checks his email, but there's no word. He checks his phone. “What the fuck, how am I not on the contact list?” He stands up and shuts down everything he's been working on, taking his jacket from the back of his chair.

“Seriously? Shit, when I realized you were nowhere in the chatter I thought maybe you just hadn't _read_ the email. Since you wouldn't be here. Um, then you also don't know he's apparently alive. That is, there's metabolic activity, but of course there could be damage.” Clint frowns. 

Phil freezes for a second, then picks up his bag and walks toward Clint. “You're not pulling my leg?”

“Uh, no. If I were inclined to prank you in return for, you know, everything, one, I would have done it a long time ago and two, I wouldn't pick _this_.” He steps inside the office. “You can't think I would.”

“No, not really. Just--” Phil sighs and closes the distance between them. He's emotional, okay? His childhood hero. Alive. Clint coming to make sure he knew. Exhaustion. Loneliness. Apparently pride has a ceiling too, because when he gets close, he just keeps going, dropping the bag next to their feet and pulling Clint in for a kiss. 

A long, wonderful, amazing, perfect kiss nearly 91 weeks after the last one, which feels like it's healing him on some sort of exponential scale, more every second, and goddamn he really should have been sent back to whatever course covers emotional intelligence 101 a long time ago because obviously, obviously this is the only right choice here, to do this forever. Clint backs out of the kiss first, clearing his throat. “So, I'm happy to stand here and make out with you all day and then take you home and finish the job, but is this, this is, what is this?”

Phil closes his eyes and drops his chin. “I don't fucking know.”

Clint pulls him back in, holds him in a firm hug, and after several seconds says thickly into his hair. “I hope it happens again, when I didn't just tell you huge news that goes to work on emotions you've had since you were eight, but right now, you should go find out what's up.”

Phil nods and doesn't pull out of Clint's arms for a long five seconds. Then he straightens and lifts his chin, professional face firmly in place. “We should talk,” he finally says. “After this gets figured out.”

Clint grins, a real smile like Phil hasn't seen from him in a long time, he realizes right now--he's seen Clint grin many times over the last several months, but he'd only been lying to himself that they were real, and then he shakes his head, the grin dimming a little. “The last time you said we should talk, it sucked, by the way. Let's not do that again.”

Phil shrugs. “I didn't--it seemed--I never--”

“ _After_ ,” Clint says. “Also, I'm on my way out to Pegasus again tonight. So after that.”

Phil's impulse is to say the hell with Captain America, they should fix this right now. But Clint is already stepping back, and also he's right, despite that he's had literally years to consider his failings now; doing anything about this between one emotional moment and one deadline in a couple of hours would be rushing in.

He wants to rush.

But it's really not his call. He doesn't have the right to dictate Clint's terms here, even if Clint would let him (he would). So he lets him go and picks his bag back up. 

* * *

The video is the worst thing Phil has ever seen, both because of the content, and because a part of him can't help but rail against the fact that even though he tried for nearly two years to stop having to worry about Clint and danger and the hole it would make in his heart if (when) something happened to him, here they are all over again, and it's just not fair.

He refocuses on the video. It's shitty quality because they had to pull it from servers that were in the middle of frying and/or being ground to dust, but it's clear that Clint is out of, out of his mind? Out of commission? Compromised, and besides the tape, Nick and Maria both verify, and fuck--Loki? Seriously, they were doing gods again?

He'd been on the ground at Pegasus for only fifty minutes when everything went to shit, long enough to sign in for quarters and ask for them to be larger because Clint is here (not that that was the stated reason) and they are going to fix this, long enough to start the bare-bones facility tour he always makes when he's first on-site if there's no immediate crisis, right after reporting his arrival to base command..

That's a habit he should have broken. He should have had someone spell Clint and started that talk the minute he touched down. He should have gone in there and stood between Clint and what the fuck ever that was. He should have sent a message to distract Clint from coming down to the floor. He should have done anything.

The video ends, and Phil gets out his phone to call Natasha. They _have to_ get him back.

He doesn't tell her that. He doesn't need to, and if it's not that Clint has already been in touch with her to say they're fixing things, then he's never been more grateful for how well she knows him that she doesn't make him explain anything in this moment. Her voice alone grounds him enough to wait more or less calmly while she deals with her immediate situation, and then she's back, swearing a couple of times about the assignment he gives her before starting to plot the course. And then, just before they hang up, she says quietly, "There will still be time. He's strong, Phil, and he's--you know he's stable, that things don't shake him, right? We'll get him back."

He doesn't know why he should or even _could_ believe her, but her confidence gives him just enough of his own to end the call and start barking out the orders to break him into Stark's giant penis surrogate in New York.

Actually, the look on Stark's face when he breaks in is the third-best thing that's happened to him in quite a while, and he puts it away for later, to tell Clint about when they get him back. 

It's 48 hours before they see him again, a quick glimpse in security footage near a known weapons trader north of Kalispell, and then another 22 before they catch him again in a shop in Knoxville. Neither location is exactly a metropolitan center known through the nine realms, but they are both places where he's done work before, and Phil narrows the search to places Clint's spent more than a few days. 

Of course, the nature of the jobs being what it is, that still leaves a long fucking list, and they've made no more progress by the time they capture Loki in Germany. And then the focus of everything shifts, because they have to figure out his game. 

They have to, because Loki means to rule the earth, sure, but they also have to because it feels like it's Clint's only chance, and Phil isn't going to let that go easily. That his reason is much more personal than humanitarian should worry him, and he knows it, but can't bring himself to give a crap, and when the attack on the Helicarrier comes, he knows it doesn't matter. All he can do is go try, himself, to do something about the tantruming god in the fishbowl and see what shakes out.

* * *

When Phil wakes, the first thing he wonders about is Clint. 

The next thing he wonders about it what the fuck happened that he survived. His hands are free, although there's a needle in his arm that, given his head is reasonably clear, he suspects is mostly nutritional. Still, he leaves it and feels his chest, where he remembers the horror of the protruding blade, the sick sharp feeling of intrusion and hot pulsing blood, the terrible moment of clear knowledge that this was the end. His fingers find the place easily enough, and it's a little sore, but closed up, the scar tissue firm and a little bit numb. He's healed, which suggests either he's just had the worst and weirdest nightmare of his life (that he's in a medical facility of some kind belies this), or it's been a long time. Weeks, maybe months. 

He's out of the loop, probably the furthest out he's been in decades, and he doesn't like it.

A young man, an orderly maybe, comes to check on him two minutes later, glancing at the monitors Phil assumes alerted his caregivers to his wakefulness, and he asks about any visitors in a rusty voice that confirms the weeks-or-months theory, but the kid shrugs, which suggests Clint hasn't been here. Which suggests... all right, Phil doesn't like any of the things it suggests. 

He considers asking for a tablet and a newspaper, but if he does that he won't be able to keep from reading every detail of the entire debacle, and if he does that, and Clint… shit. Not knowing is unacceptable, but knowing for sure might be worse. Or not. He spends a couple of hours trying to decide what to do about the issue, then spends a couple more trying to put it out of his mind and go to sleep (which, given the amount of healing that he must have been doing and the drugs most likely involved, seems necessary) and when he concludes that’s never going to happen, finally rings for the nurse.

It’s a woman he doesn't recognize, hasn’t worked with before—which is actually kind of impressive; between them, he and Clint have amassed what Clint always called a shit ton of time on a gurney, and he thought he knew everyone. Well, maybe she’s new. Although then... why is she in here with him? His security clearance tends to mean he gets the old hands.

“Sir?” she says, startling him out of reflection.

“I realize I’m in no shape for a full mission report,” he says.

“Definitely not, sir.”

“But I am not going to be able to sleep unassisted until I know a couple of specific details.”

She tilts her head. “The incident in which you were injured is fairly significantly classified, sir. I assume operational details are not available to the medical staff at large, but I'm willing to tell you what I know. Assuming I judge it won't set you back.”

So either she’s willing to tell him, or she’s not but she’ll pretend. Phil studies her for several seconds. “Well,” he says finally. “I expect this one is unlikely to be buried that deep. Did Agent Barton, codename—uh.” He pauses, feeling heat rush to his face because he has not forgotten to deal with the security of agent aliases in _years_. “Uh, can I see your badge?”

She smiles. “Agent Coulson, surely you remember that medical personnel clearance doesn’t work the same way as ordinary clearance. However, as Agent Barton, codename Hawkeye, listed you as his medical proxy, I’m aware that we had to request a new designation from him prior to his first assignment after New York. I don’t know much about him past that point.”

Phil blinks at the statement about the medical proxy. Actually, Clint is still listed as his, too, which is something he should have changed but is glad he didn’t, but which, if Clint—well, it’s one more thing he needs to take care of. But then his brain catches up. “So he—“

“Came away from the event fine and fit for duty, sir.”

“All right.” Phil pauses. “Has he been here?”

She presses her lips together. “I am not cleared to discuss why not,” she says carefully, “but I want to assure you it’s not that he was killed, or injured.” There's a momentary pause, and then she explains, “If he’d been injured, I’d have more information. Here, hold on.” She pulls something that’s either a large phone or a small tablet out of the front pocket of her apron and pokes at it for a few minutes. “Here.” She turns it to face him and plays a chunk of video footage.

Phil reaches and she hands him the device. “I have internet, a little spotty but mostly okay, on here—but as far as SHIELD access is concerned, I only have authorization for medical files,” she says. “No mission reports, and please don’t try to hack it. I like my job.”

“Of course.” Phil’s glad she said that, because now he has a reason beyond self-preservation not to dig, and he doesn’t want to fuck over someone who’s helping him. He watches the video, which turns out to be news coverage of during and after what’s apparently been dubbed the Battle of Manhattan (good god, what did Loki _do_?) and finally feels his stomach unclench when sees flashes of Clint high on a rooftop. After, the file returns to the news announcers in the studio, and then turns to post-incident images and interviews. Phil sees Clint walking next to (Jesus, fantasy of a lifetime) Captain America in, respectively, a torn and dusty tac suit and a torn and bloody iteration of the uniform Phil had dorkily told Cap he’d helped design, and that’s—he’s walking, and he looks well. In which case… where is he?

Phil googles for more footage, more interviews, and eventually finds his answer.

Because he—Phil, not Clint—is dead. 

He scowls and hands back the tablet. “I’m dead?”

“According to unclassified data, I’m given to understand that’s the case.”

“What the hell?” Phil shifts uncomfortably on the bed and continues, “I’m hardly the face of anything, so my death or survival is not particularly of interest. Not to the public.”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. The Director is on his way, though, and I’m sure he’ll be able to tell you more.”

Phil isn’t so sure about that. Or rather, he’s certain Nick will tell him ‘more’, but he might not tell him what he needs to know. Nick’s an asshole like that, when he thinks he has a greater good on the table.

Still, there’s nothing more to be done, so Phil sighs. “Can I get a newspaper?”

“Sure.” She opens the door and then turns back. “We were worried you wouldn’t be intellectually intact, you know. Someone will be in to do more tests, but in case you were wondering, the fact that you seem to have recall of people and places right up to the last, that’s very encouraging.”

“Intellectually intact?”

“You coded a number of times. Oxygen to the brain was disrupted. I’m glad you seem to have come through. I’ll get that paper now.” She exits the room, and Phil frowns after her, pinged by a sense of familiarity that makes no sense.

Well, she’ll be back, and he can puzzle over it more later. Right now, immediate needs met, he finds that he really does need that sleep he was chasing earlier.

When he wakes, Nick is in the chair by the bed, feet up, most of the way through Phil’s paper. “Cheese.”

“Marcus.” They stare at each other a few minutes, and then Nick drops his feet to the floor and stands, outside Phil’s reach, which…that’s not reassuring. Still, Phil quirks a brow. “Leaving so soon?”

“You’re not gonna like what I got to say, so I think I’ll tell this story from over here.”

“Figured.”

“According to all reports, you’re dead.”

“So I heard.”

“You _heard_?” Nick looks genuinely startled by that, and Phil wonders if he’s just caused the nurse a problem, but then he goes on. “Did you _hear_ that your resuscitation has been kept from everyone level 7-down?”

“Everyone?” Clint is level seven, but surely he’s excepted.

“Everyone,” Nick says. “Yes, including them.” 

Phil sits up—too fast; it makes his head spin, but that can wait. “Clint’s my medical proxy, Nick. You can’t—“

“Can. Did. Before you ever died, actually. Compromised agent, security, you know how this works, man. But.”

“But what. Get him here.”

“Can’t.”

“Can, will. Agent not compromised and since I'm dead I can speak freely: fuck you, if he’s been on missions since you know he’s clean. Security, tough shit, and I do know how this works.”

“Thought you broke up.”

“Did, and then undid. Get him here.”

“No really, Cheese, I can’t. I don’t know where Barton _is_.”

“Bullshit.”

“You’re saying that man does not know how to get his ass off the grid and stay where I can’t see him? Think, Phil. Even _I_ ain't got eyes _everywhere_. Especially not since...” He flaps a hand toward Phil, encompassing 'the situation here' with the gesture.

“You’re saying he disappeared.”

“I’m saying, he resigned six weeks ago, with what I’m going to call extreme prejudice, and then he vanished. By all signs, it was deliberate. Left all his shit at HQ or with Stark’s crew, and best I can tell became real thin smoke on a meandering goddamn breeze.”

“Jesus, Nick. Extreme prejudice? He shoot an arrow through your door? And he left his shit—left his _bow_?” Phil waits for the nod of confirmation and says,” What were you thinking to let--never mind, doesn't matter, what the fuck, _find him_.”

“Close enough, and Phil, honest, I tried. Still tryin'. No luck, and your girl isn't exactly helping. Hindering, more like.”

“My girl? If by that you're talking about Natasha—who I assume also does not know? If you're talking about her, I strongly recommend you never let her hear you refer to her that way.” 

“I'll take it under consideration. But there's more we got to discuss.

“More. Than the fact I died and you didn't consult Clint, and also by the way you can't find him.”

Fury sighs. “Look, thing is, I need you to _stay_ dead, and--”

“No.”

“Phil, you know I can take the choice out of your hands.”

Phil crosses his arms over his chest, which makes the IV needle shift uncomfortably, but tough shit. “What, you're going to kill me again?”

“Rather not.”

“Well, then I guess we have a stalemate. I'm not staying dead to Clint. Or Natasha.” He considers for a minute. “Actually, that's probably out of _your_ hands. You have a duty roster for this room?”

“What?”

“The woman that was here before... I'd lay money it was Agent Romanov in one of those face nets. She was a stranger, but familiar.”

Fury's shoulders slump. “God damn it. The only women on the access list for this place since you got back are Hill, Chiaso, and Leung. You know them all.”

“I do. ...Back from where?”

“Tahiti, Phil. You spent most of your recovery in Tahiti. Don't you remember?” Nick watches him carefully for a response, which makes Phil's skin crawl just a little with a sense of fairly uncomfortable distrust, but freakily, now that he says it, Phil does remember. Sort of. Flashes of physical therapy and massage and …and magic?

“Tahiti. It's a magical place,” he says, wrinkling his nose immediately because he didn’t plan to say it and also it's really not something he'd say. Not to Nick. But he's off task. “Well, if she was here, then she knows, and if she knows...”

“Fucking wild cards,” Fury says. “You and your team are, and have always been, a pain in my ass, Cheese, but if you're already blown, at least I don't have to kill you again.” He sighs. “Fine. I'll drop the clearance to include Level 7, and we'll see if that flushes your boy out of the woodwork.”

“He's not my boy, Nick. He's my boyfriend, and my friend, but I don't--”

“Yeah, yeah. But he's been yours for almost ten years.” 

He turns to go, and leaves Phil considering the situation again. And berating himself, again, for a lost 21 months. Hell, apparently longer than that. Two years? Two and a half? God, it's near enough as long as they were together in the first place. Nguyen-Mills would have told him he was a fucking idiot, and she would have been right.

He finally shakes his head and picks up the newspaper sections—no current events, just sports and entertainment; apparently someone, somewhere is using a performance-enhancing drug, and there's some controversy about Billy Ray Cyrus's kid cutting her hair and wearing revealing clothing.

Ugh. He needs to find out what the PT schedule looks like, and get something real to eat, maybe not in that order. And get some real information, Jesus.

Four hours later, he’s ready for another nap, and that’s just ridiculous, but he’s made good use of the time, first with soup and his newspaper and then, after a terse conversation with PT, with the tablet someone brought him an hour and a half in. 

Also, Clint is still nowhere to be seen, and a brief jaunt through his email and SHIELD’s servers suggests Natasha doesn’t know where he is, either. She’s gathering the data for herself, for the moment, and then she’ll go looking. 

Perfect. He glances at the clock and judges ninety minutes to PT, so he rings for some of the energy/protein gel crap he’s sure they have, sucks, it down, and settles in for the nap. He’s going to need it. 

Good thing he's such a damn genius with the planning and contingencies, as obviously evidenced by everything that's happened lately. He's going to need those skills if Clint doesn't want to be found.

* * *

It does turn out, once Phil is up to doing any looking, that Clint does not want to be found, and when he finally bullies the operations team into employing some of the StarkTech the engineering boys have only in the last couple of months fully isolated from JARVIS on the carrier and put into play as an independent (nonintelligent) module, they don’t find a damn thing for two long weeks. And then, at last, just about the time Phil is seriously considering going to Stark directly, secrecy about his status be damned, he shows up on a gas station monitor. Finally. He’s west of Tulsa, pumping 8.2 gallons of regular into a dilapidated pickup that used to be green and is now mostly oil-slick ocean gray, and even on the grainy monitor feed he looks like shit, hair graying in ways that make Phil’s stomach clench and eyes dull in a way that he very much needs to never see again, although he suspects it’s not going to be any prettier in person. 

Clint pays with a card, and because Stark knows how to teach his machines to play like real boys, it's a matter of five minutes before Phil has the number, the bank, the name on the card, and a list of previous uses of that one and others issued to the same guy. He figures it’ll be maybe fifteen more minutes before he has a list of other aliases and their IDs, but this is a hell of a start.

And, on examination, a pretty distressing one at that, because the Clint Barton Phil has known for many years is, despite the absurd assumptions some have always made about uneducated hicks and brawn rather than brain, an outstanding tactician, and he always has a plan, a backup plan, routes and numbers, directions and criteria, lists and contingencies—and it’s always clear that this is the case; looking back at any game he’s played in, it’s always been apparent where the plan derailed, when the contingencies kicked in. Yeah, a stranger watching him in the moment wouldn’t always be able to predict him, although Phil feels like he could, but looking back is different. And this Clint? This Clint is going nowhere—literally, his path is so aimless Phil thinks he's probably asking a stranger to draw a card from a deck every night to pick his direction.

Anyone else would be throwing darts at a map, but, well, Clint doesn’t know how to not take aim, so that would be an exercise in futility. And so he’s been through thirty-one states in a couple of months, irregularly on freeways and rural routes and toll roads, stopping in towns so small their post offices and auto mechanics share space and in cities where he could stay and lose himself without effort. He’s been across Kansas north to south and east to west, and has taken four extended loops into and back out of Montana, one of which looks to have involved very literally one day or driving west halfway across the state followed by going back east on the same road the next day, and he’s stopped at the Grand Canyon to buy gas, only to immediately hit the road again, no time for viewing natural wonders.

There's really no way to predict his next path (except that he’s apparently avoiding the shit out of both Iowa and most of New England, which is also kind of telling), and Natasha is once again not taking Phil's calls—or, she’s so far off the grid the numbers he has aren’t reaching her. He feels like if she knew he was actively looking for Clint she’d call him back, so he does what he has to and flies to Abilene a couple of days later. Last place they picked up one of the credit cards was more or less on the way here, and he might as well be in the area when they get another hit.

He checks into a motel with faded red arrows to attract travelers from the highway and heads for the room, around the corner near what turns out to be a surprisingly well-kept pool. Just as he closes the door behind him, he hears the next one open, and on impulse, he catches his before it clicks shut and gives a tug.

Walking away from him, in low-riding faded trunks with a towel over one shoulder, is Clint.

Phil considers, for a nanosecond, closing the door again; he's not ready. However, Clint's probably already spotted him in the reflection of, who knows, maybe the Ford in the lot kitty corner past the pool? And that means this is Phil's only chance. He drops his bag in the room, pockets the key, and steps back out.

“Clint.”

Clint freezes, clearly startled, and what the hell, he _hasn't_ seen Phil yet. That’s possibly the most worrying thing Phil’s learned in all the weeks since he woke up—it’s been four months, which is a hell of a lot longer than Phil had hoped, but he’s been coming for Clint as fast as he can and hoping it would be fast enough. Maybe not; the startle is even worse than the meandering path.

Phil walks up behind him, letting his footfalls sound clearly, and says again, “Clint.”

“You’re dead, and it’s my fault,” Clint says. “I thought we already worked all this out in Elephant Butte.” He doesn’t turn around.

Phil pauses, puzzled. “Elephant Butte?” Clint had stopped there for several hours four days earlier; the images of him sitting motionless for several hours on the roof of Chisholm’s Corner Stop had been from a security camera at a storage facility across the street, and Phil had wondered what had kept him—Buck Chisholm’s name certainly hadn’t made him flinch in a long time. “What happened in Elephant Butte?”

“We drove by that rehab place on the way there? Stopped and watched?” Clint resumes walking to the pool and stops on the edge. “Come on, keep up. You’re a figment, and my imagination shouldn’t be able to keep secrets from itself.”

“I’m not a figment, I see why you think so, I didn’t know, please don’t run.” Phil figures that’s four of the first five things and he spits them all out at once. “Also, it’s _my_ fault for leaving and I’m not dead.”

Okay, so it’s six things. Sue him.

“Bullshit. It’s seriously fucked up for you to lie to me, imagination.”

“I’m not. Your imagination, or lying. What happened in Elephant Butte?”

Clint shakes his head, but he doesn’t turn around. “You know what happened. I watched them do their PT for a while with their asshole trainer yelling at them—no mercy, that dude, even for the guy with the foot. Reminded me of Guardino after the Chile thing. And I had that weird feeling and I just could. not. shake it. So we stopped and I told you to cut it out, and then you did, and then here you _are_ again, and what the hell, man, I am _trying to goddamn move on_ like you said you wanted me to, and here you fucking _are_.” He finally unfreezes with that and walks on, rolling his shoulders briskly like he’s dislodging an irritating housefly and diving (against the clearly-posted regulations, but why start complying with the rules now?) into the deeper end of the little pool.

Phil follows and stands at the edge of the water. “None of that actually makes me a figment,” he says when Clint surfaces. “What was the weird feeling?”

Clint rolls his eyes. “That whole breakup thing was bad enough, Phil. There’s no reason you have to be _cruel_ here, but fine. It was that feeling I’ve had all along, like you’re there, like you’re working, only this time it was really specific to the running, like you were right there with those guys on the PT grind, around the side of the building while the trainer hollers for them to go harder.”

Phil thinks about it. “Actually, that’s a little disconcerting; I _was_ , right about then, doing the endurance test. With Guardino, actually. Last thing I had to do before they’d let me the fuck _out_ to come _find_ you.”

Clint sighs. “Right, and _before_ , I used to see you, but that made more sense, but this was just the feeling. And then you went away, like you were _supposed to_ , and now you’re back.”

“Now I’ve found you.” Phil crouches, and then on impulse dips his hand into the water and splashes at Clint. “Do I feel like a figment?”

Clint slowly blinks away the water that hits his eyes and slowly shakes his head. “Awesome, now I got psychosomatic bullshit goin' on, too.” 

“I _was_ dead. I am now nondead. I apparently was mostly-dead for several days, including when you went to Baltimore for the Doom thing—and it looked from the reports like you were... maybe not okay, but functioning, then. I ceased being mostly dead a couple of days later.

“Right. So the problem with you proving it with things I know is that you're in here with me, man.” Clint taps his head to show where _here_ is and shrugs. “Tell me somethin' I _don't_ know.”

Phil sighs and sits down on one of the dirty plastic poolside chairs, bending forward (still awkward, but doable) to untie his shoes and pull them off. “I don't know what you do and don't know, Clint. Do you know Natasha found me in the hospital just before Fury came to tell me to stay dead? Do you know that my revival was restricted to Level Eight? Do you know that it's now restricted to Level Seven, and that if you were to call in and check you'd find that out?”

Clint chews on that for a minute. “Nope, but that's what I want to hear, and if I'm fucked up enough to think I feel you splashing water on me, I'm pretty sure we can also hallucinate all that shit at will.”

Phil ditches his socks as well, then stands and drops his jeans to the concrete.

“Oh, yeah, _that's_ helping your case. Phil Coulson, inveterate public stripper.”

“I’m trying new things like working on getting back the man I stupidly, _stupidly_ threw away, and anyhow, they're flannel boxers. They're not indecent.” Phil grasps the hem of his t-shirt. “Here's something you don't want to see, I hope, so maybe this will help. Ready?”

“Is this going to be like the end of that Shyamalan movie? I see dead people with holes in 'em?” Clint hasn't moved in the water, is just standing there like he's frozen in place, like he has to stop his body in order to deal with any of this, and Phil suddenly remembers a decade-younger Clint, already an astonishingly-accurate sniper and tactician, struggling to unlearn the impulse to freeze everything but the weapons under stress. It was a learned behavior, taught by his shitty abusive father and his shitty abusive carnival employer, one that had been an early part of how he'd become aware of the value of the psych department while they trained him to be the weapon and the human at the same time.

Phil hasn't seen this particular type of shutdown in Clint since an episode in 2004, and that's when he stops pulling his t-shirt over his head and instead just jumps into the pool, hands open and in front of him as he approaches because all at once he's realized that this is a Clint that he can spook, badly, and further that if he does, he can't begin to guess what the man who now knows what it feels like to have stability and have it taken away will do. Ten years ago, he’d have bolted, but he’d have done it to hide, to survive. Now, he’ll probably still run, but right this minute Phil isn’t confident he knows _how_ to keep surviving. Until a few minutes ago, sure; that was what he was doing, aliases intact and recon-and-blending-in skills doing exactly what they were supposed to, but in those minutes, something has broken. Badly. He swallows. “Clint, I'm going to touch you.”

“No shit. Think I'll feel it?”

“I certainly hope so, because I also want you to touch me.”

“Awesome. Not only am I being haunted by the ghost of my boyfriend that I killed, he's a perv.”

Phil resists the urge to roll his eyes and doesn't try to correct the 'ghost' and 'killed' parts, and reaches, taking Clint's hands. “Not like that. So far so good?”

“Sure, why not. This is totally as relaxing as a swim.”

“Like you could really swim in a pool this size.”

“Fine, it's as relaxing as floating.”

Phil trails his fingers up Clint's arms, cherishing the corded muscle he's missed but setting that aside for the moment, too and gripping Clint's elbows. “I'm not psych, but I think you probably need to see the scar and see it healed. But—if I let go, you might, as the kids say, bounce.”

“So I get to unwrap my dead boyfriend, hey let’s go all the way and call it what it is, my dead semi-ex-boyfriend for close examination in a little pool outside a hotel in Abilene?” Phil feels the tremor under his fingers and grips tighter.

“Not dead,” he says, “and not ex, semi- or otherwise. And if you want, we can take this inside. To my room, even.”

Clint startles badly, losing all semblance of calm or control with a physical jolt that resolves into a recurring shudder. “You have a room?” 

“I do. It's next to yours. Why?”

“Because I don't think I would hallucinate a whole other room. I _could_ , but I don’t think I _would_. Which. You. I. Phil?” The color drains from Clint's face and with very little warning Phil finds himself supporting his weight, turning him so his back is against Phil's chest and Phil can tow him to the shallow edge and hoist him out (roll him, actually; he passed the physical to get out of PT and on the road, but lifting dead-weight Clint to chest height with the complicating balance features of standing trunk-deep in water is a little on the edge of what he can do). He gets him on his back on the concrete and then clambers up after him, sitting down and panting, one hand on his shoulder to ground him, and fuck fuck fuck, there is no play here that takes into account anything Phil thought he needed when he started, today or in the hospital or a thousand years ago when he broke up with Clint to save himself. Now he can tell, what he’s going to be doing is taking care of Clint until he’s fixed.

Which is fine; he wants to, and while he gets that honestly, this kind of breakage is what he feared for himself every time Clint jumped, he knows that if he can fix Clint, this is absolutely the risk he is choosing, permanently, because he thinks he wouldn’t be faring any better. And so he sits there, waiting and watching. After a minute, Clint comes around a little.

Phil squeezes the shoulder and leans in. “Please don't faint again if I say we really should take this inside, not least because I can't think of that many things I want less than the night clerk looking out here and deciding to call 9-1-1. You just have to stay conscious for a few more minutes.”

Clint reaches across with his other hand to grasp Phil's. “I. Maybe.” His mouth turns down into a scowl and his pulse—Phil can see the heartbeat pounding at his carotid—bumps up too high, but he rolls and pushes himself upright on his knees. “You can't. It's inside, and.” He shakes his head like a dog, sending water flying, and drops his chin to his chest. “It was, he took. I can't explain.”

Phil reaches, carefully, all too aware that he's both the cause and the solution of a crisis that must have been building since, well, since he got himself skewered, and pulls Clint's chin up. “You don't have to talk. We'll start with whatever you've got, and go from there. Okay?”

“Okay.” Clint stands and lets Phil tow him—they have to go around for Phil's jeans because his key is in them and he doesn't want to try to pick the lock _or_ get a duplicate dripping wet in his underwear, so he picks up his shoes and socks and Clint's towel and as well, and then he steers Clint toward the room.

That Clint just _goes_ , docile and silent, sends a shiver up Phil's spine, but he'll work on that later. Right now, he has a partner to get dry and warm and a couple of phone calls to make.

* * *

It only takes a few minutes for Phil to get them inside and divest Clint of his swim trunks (much of that time involves a discussion with his conscience about nudity and consent, but he eventually tells it to fuck off, for God’s sake, Clint’s never been body shy, and also he doesn’t object and Phil has no nefarious intent and it’s for a good reason. But it still feels weird). He considers just putting him to bed, but although Clint is certainly wet from the pool, his hair is stiff and clumping a little and there’s dirt ground into the skin of his palms and under his nails, and what that suggests is that he needs a shower. And besides that, he’s pale, he has bags under his eyes, and now that he’s not frozen, he’s twitchy, both in the sense of fidgeting and in the sense of random muscles appearing to spasm in his jaw, his fingers, his back, his neck.

Phil doesn’t give a crap about getting the sheets dirty, but he does care that this implies Clint hasn’t been taking care of himself very well, and he shivers again as he wonders whether the trip to the pool was actually for swimming, or if there was some darker goal. But that can wait. He directs him into the shower and climbs in behind him, t-shirt and boxers still dripping as they walk. The water is warm, and Clint leans against the wall as Phil washes his hair, his back, his shoulders and arms. 

When he’s clean, Phil turns off the water and wrings out the hems of his own sodden clothes—he should just take everything off, but his conscience is less swayable on this topic so he doesn’t—and then steps out and grabs a towel, handing it to him and then, when he shrugs, just drying him off, removing the lanyard with his room key from around his neck He’s careful with him, like Clint is fragile, but he doesn’t want to linger, so he makes do with the minimum and then takes him out and puts him to bed. Sleep won’t fix anything, but it will be a start.

Clint crawls under the covers, and then reaches for Phil, to drag him in with.

“Just a second, let me change.”

Clint’s face crumples, but he withdraws his hand back under the blankets. Phil watches him for a long moment, then reluctantly steps just far enough away to strip off his heavy wet clothes and pull his jeans back on. He goes back to the edge of the bed. “Do you want me to go get you dry clothes?”

Clint stares at him. “What?”

“Your key card is in your lanyard. Do you want me to go get you something to wear to sleep?” Clint just shrugs again, and Phil nods. “Later, maybe.” He starts to turn and go around the bed, but Clint’s chin wobbles, so he pauses. “I’m just coming around behind you,” he explains.

Clint wordlessly throws back the blanket and scoots away from Phil, then holds out his hand.

“Okay, that works.” He sits on the bed and squeezes Clint’s hand, then reaches with his free hand and smoothes the hair off his forehead. “I’m staying, but I want you to sleep. Can you sleep for me?”

Clint squirms closer, his grip on Phil’s hand painfully tight, his keen eyes staring at the mess of scar tissue now t-shirtless and visible between Phil’s nipples. “You died.”

“I did, but then I came back. Clint, I didn’t mean to leave, and I want to be here now, okay?”

“Kay.”

“So will you sleep for me?”

Clint stares at the scar some more, then closes his eyes very deliberately, chin trembling. After a moment he manages, “Try.”

“All I can ask. Here.” Phil swings his legs up and rearranges himself to face Clint. “Turn around.”

Clint shakes his head once, a sulky firm refusal, but Phil says it again. “I’m staying, Clint, and I’ll stay where you can feel. Promise.” He maneuvers Clint over and curls in behind him, one arm pillowing his head and crossing his chest, the other around his waist. “Okay?”

There’s a long pause, and then Clint breathes out hard, forcing his body to relax. “Kay,” he mutters, voice cracking. 

Phil waits to see if there’s more, but Clint is still, and eventually, he’s asleep, his hands gripping the forearm across his chest.

Those phone calls still need to be made; among other things, Phil is supposed to check in and he doesn’t want a backup team to show up with guns, and besides that, he needs to get psych looped in. He can reassure, and it’s not like he doesn’t have pretty decent field psychology skills or know what all Clint’s issues used to be and apparently are again, but he’s out of his depth if it’s as bad as it looks, and he knows in his heart it is. He rolls back slightly to try to reach his phone, but Clint startles and grips harder, so he comes back, drops a kiss on his shoulder, mutters reassurance, and commits to waiting until Clint is ready to let go.

What Phil wants, obviously, is to roll Clint in breathable bubble wrap and take him home, to hold him until he’s okay again, and to promise, and keep it this time, that he’ll never leave. 

The problems with this approach are myriad.

He doesn’t know where ‘home’ is—Clint’s name is still on the lease of the apartment they shared, but a quick trip there before he left town had shown a newspaper from the day before he’d left for Pegasus and a science experiment in the fridge.

He’s pretty sure bubble wrap and snipers aren’t a good match, and while he can’t say for sure that Clint will heal enough to be a sniper again, he’s working with the assumption that someday, maybe not soon, he will.

He doesn’t have the skills to fix everything that’s wrong himself no matter how much he wants those promises to take care of everything.

And he can’t actually promise to outlive Clint. He always assumed he would, given the jumping and the danger, but an assumption and a promise aren’t the same thing.

It’s not a question of whether he’ll call Psych; it’s just a question of who to call. He’s got time to think about it, since Clint’s showing no signs of letting go, 

* * *

When Phil calls, Nguyen-Mills picks up with, “This is Nancy.” 

He pauses, then decides fuck it, if she doesn’t know he’s alive, she’s about to so he might as well just be blunt. “Coulson,” he says. “I have Barton. He’s a mess. I can’t handle the problem, and I’m not even sure I can get him to come in.”

There’s a long silence, long enough that if it weren’t for the hum of activity around her and the gentle clicking of a keyboard an arm’s length away from the phone, Phil might have thought she’d hung up. Finally, she speaks again. “I’ve cleared my schedule for a few days and found a pilot with an open slot. Where are you?”

His relief at sharing the problem is sufficient to make it hard to speak, but he heaves a sigh and tells her.

“And you? Do you still need to talk to me? Or does death obviate the need for counseling help?”

“I…” Phil shakes his head and pets Clint’s hair; they’re still in bed but Clint’s shifted around finally, sprawling with his head on Phil’s belly and his arm wrapped around one of Phil’s legs. “Probably, but you don’t do relationship stuff.”

She makes a rude noise and keeps clicking keys. “But I _do_ do agent health stuff, and something tells me your health is in play too, and has been all along.”

Phil can’t deny that. “Just out of curiosity, did you know I was alive?”

“Sure, for the last six minutes now. Maybe seven. Is Barton's problem physical, too, or can I assume you'd have called medical if you thought you needed them?”

“Physically he's not ...he's not hurt. I don't think. You seem very unruffled by—“

“It’s SHIELD, Agent. We probably wrote the book, and if I took the time to read even the outline of the Fury and Council machinations document, I’d never have time to pee. I’ll deal with my own response later.”

“You’re amazing.” The admiration in Phil’s voice is genuine, but she makes another derisive sound.

“Says the guy that handles superheroes.”

“They do most of the work. Barton is …not unruffled. He’s very, very ruffled.”

“Because his dead ex-boyfriend showed up while he was off the grid? Go figure. While I have you, though, I assume that’s the nature of the mess you started this conversation with?”

“Why does everyone keep calling me that? But fine, yes. That and …I’m not sure. Maybe there are other things. Did he come talk to anyone after New York?”

“I’ve been looking while we talked. You’re still listed as his medical proxy--looks like there was a request for update, but he ignored it.”

“I know. I wouldn’t have asked for medical information—all right, I might have.”

“I’m going with the second one. We haven’t seen him, so unless he talked to someone else—“

“Doubt it.”

“So do I. In any case, no. I spoke to him several times over the year leading up, but after, well, there was a lot going on. It’s possible we should have prioritized differently immediately after, but there were a lot of people who needed us.”

What Phil wants to say is bullshit, obviously they should have made sure, but logically he knows she’s right, so instead he says, “Water under the bridge.”

“I know. Oh, okay—Jacobs says he can have me to you in 72 minutes, so call it an hour and a half with walking time and finding a place to set down. See you then.” She hangs up without another word, and Phil goes back to stroking Clint’s hair, considering that he really, really should have gone to see her two years ago. _Really_ should have.

* * *

Natasha, of course, picks the lock for Nguyen-Mills because Phil is busy keeping his hands on Clint.

He’d seemed calmer in sleep, clingy but more or less accepting of Phil’s presence, but as soon as he’d blinked his eyes open he’d scrambled backwards across the bed, curling his knees up against his chest as he sat at the far side with a pillow literally forming a barrier between him and Phil, and it had taken several minutes to return to the point at which he’d allowed Phil to touch him. Phil isn’t sure how much longer his bladder is going to tolerate the situation, but if all else fails he can just piss on the floor if it means keeping Clint grounded and safe.

Fortunately, Natasha takes the question out of his hands. When she first arrives, she raises an eyebrow at Phil, then looks Clint up and down and takes up a position on the other side of him, murmuring low in Russian as Nguyen-Mills observes them all. 

Finally, Nguyen-Mills speaks, addressing Clint. “Agent Barton, can you give Agent Coulson a moment to go wash up?”

Clint squeezes Phil’s arm harder for a minute, then looks away and carefully, deliberately, lets go.

“Excellent. Would you like Agent Romanov to remain?”

Clint’s head jerks a sharp nod, and Nguyen-Mills gestures to Phil to go brush his teeth or something.

Phil slides out of the bed, glad he had kept his jeans on all the time. He picks up a handful of fresh clothes and steps into the bathroom, leaving the door ajar enough to hear if Clint needed him; sure, it means there’s a sliver of mirror where he can see the counselor as well, but she’s a professional and Phil once completely changed out of blood-soaked clothes in an occupied kindergarten classroom without incident, so he figures she’ll live if she accidentally sees his ass for one second. He does brush his teeth, allowing the rumble of talking in the next room to roll over him. 

He gives them two minutes—enough time to empty his bladder, gargle with the travel-size mouthwash in his kit, duck his head under the spray, and comb his hair in addition to pulling on a shirt and pants—then goes back out.

Clint is back in a ball in the corner, all the pillows piled around him as he pants and darts his eyes from person to person and around the room, his body frozen in place. Nguyen-Mills seems comfortable with the arrangement, though, so Phil decides to be as well. He catches her eye and nods, then puts himself back on the bed, hand worming under the nearest pillow to just graze Clint’s thigh with his knuckles.

Clint relaxes immediately, and all right, that’s both good and bad. Good that he would calm; bad that two minutes without Phil had sent him into a panic, that he’s clearly been hanging on while Phil was _taken away_ again, rather than understanding the absence to be temporary and very short-term. It’s not that he doesn’t know, intellectually; Clint is as bright as any other high-level agent, and he sees a lot. It’s that his mind and body won’t let him respond appropriately to that information, and Phil hates that any part of that (all of it, seriously, every fucking bit) is his fault. 

Christ, they have a lot of work to do.

Natasha moves around the bed and pushes Clint aside, then plasters herself up against him. “This is what we talked about, Clint,” she says.

“Is not,” he growls, low. “What we _talked_ about was how to fucking _not die_ when he did. This isn’t that.”

Phil is glad to find there are words in there, but again, this is the Clint he first met many years ago. He’s sullen and angry, and despite that every syllable sounds like a threat, it’s all desperation and bravado, and holds none of the earned confidence that Clint of a year ago had. Phil kind of wants to cry. Instead he shoves his own needs ruthlessly aside and agrees. “It’s not. You’re right. But did you talk about surviving a shock?”

“Shock. Shock, he says.” Clint glares at him, eyes red and brimming with unshed tears even as his fingers find Phil’s hand and grab tight. “You dying was not a _shock_ , and you coming back isn’t a solution.” He’s still clinging when he adds a ragged, “Fuck you.” And leans away from Phil and into Natasha.

Nguyen-Mills watches this interaction, then waits for Clint to bring his attention back to her. “Agent Barton—“

“Not an agent. Resigned and left, and that ain’t undone just because some _asshole_ came back from the dead.”

Phil thinks that’s probably fair, but there was something Clint said yesterday that he wants to come back to. “Clint, you said you saw me all the time?”

“I saw your fucking _ghost_ , which seems pretty fucking _impossible_ since you didn’t actually goddamn _die_ and I don’t know what the fuck you want me to do with that. If it wasn’t a ghost it was a fucking hallucination which means I’m even more fucking unstable than I’ve ever fucking been even after Trick and even after Loki and fuck you fuck you how did you break me _worse than a God_?”

It’s not really an answer to the question Phil wants to address, but it is a completely valid question for _Clint_ to want to address, and Nguyen-Mills steps in before Phil can answer it. “I’ve seen enough. Barton, the damage incurred to you is on SHIELD, so despite your employment status, we will fix it. For the moment, you have provisional level-two security because I need it to bring you in.”

Clint sets his mouth in a thin firm line and ignores her.

“Agent Coulson,” she goes on, “is your medical proxy under SHIELD’s umbrella. Unless you’ve explicitly excluded him as a proxy in any civilian paperwork, this remains true under your current situation. Is this acceptable to you?”

“I can’t fucking let _go_ of him, so it’s not like he’s going to get out of being there for decisions,” Clint says. “Unless you can’t see him right now and he’s still a fucking hallucination. If it’s that, just fucking end this.”

Phil jolts sharply at the suggestion of ending anything, but Nguyen-Mills merely sits at the foot of the bed, turning toward Clint and ignoring Phil and Natasha entirely. “Clint, I can see Agent Coulson, and in fact he is who called me. Natasha, can you see Agent Coulson?”

“I can. I saw him in a hospital bed in a private and well-buried facility several weeks ago, and at that time, in case it helps, Clint, the first thing he asked about was you.”

“Awesome. My dead semi-ex-boyfriend is obsessed with me.”

“I’ve been obsessed with you for years, Clint,” Phil begins, but Nguyen-Mills cuts him off. 

“He’s not dead, Clint.”

“I know. Except I don’t believe you.”

“Do you believe me?” Natasha asks.

“No. Yes. Both.”

“Do you _want_ to believe us?”

He drops his chin. “I. Yeah. Good things don’t happen to me, though. Also, if I believe you and you’re lying I don’t think I can stand up again, so it’s too risky.” His fingers spasm even tighter and he leans back into Phil. “You feel real and I want you to be and you have to be and I can’t… I can’t.” The tears that have been shining in his eyes fall down his face, but he ignores them. “I can’t believe this, but I did. I’m in a room that isn’t mine and I don’t know who I’m with. I’m compromised, maybe, and I can’t even tell. I don’t know how to tell.”

Experimentally, Phil tries to slide his hand free, partially free, of Clint’s grip, and Clint whimpers and lets go, all at once, curling into Natasha so fast Phil’s still trying to catch him by the time he gets all the way turned away.

“He’s gone again, Nat. I thought I had him but he’s gone again and what if he’s not coming back?” His voice breaks as he asks and then he’s back to panting, panicking, sweat breaking out at his hairline as his face loses color again.

Nguyen-Mills looks at Phil. “Well, medical proxy, I’d really like to sedate him and get him into a controlled environment. What do you think?”

Clint is frozen and gasping against Natasha’s throat, but the suggestion of sedation brings a full-body shudder and a sob.

Phil reaches slowly and runs his hand through Clint’s hair. “Clint, I realize this promise is dubious right now, but I’ll stay with you. If I stay with you, can you tolerate sedation?” It’s a legitimate question; Clint’s response to typical sedatives has always been nonstandard in the extreme, and sometimes he’s literally fled a facility while unconscious.

He doesn’t answer, and Phil glances at Natasha. “If Natasha handcuffs us together?”

“Hallucinations aren’t bound by steel. Or ghosts.”

“True. Do you have a better way for me to reassure you?”

“No. If I let her sedate me, you’ll keep me from leaving?”

“I will.”

“So if I leave, you’re not real?”

“I can’t argue with that logic.” Phil slides his gaze sideways to Nguyen-Mills and nods, and she pulls a syringe out of her pocket. Clint shudders again as the drug pushes into his thigh, but he relaxes (mostly) and doesn’t complain.

He also turns around and latches onto Phil one more time and refuses to let go, but in case that changes, Phil glances at Natasha. “Cuffs? Just in case.”

She arches a brow at him. “You hurt him again, you actually die, and I do what I have to do to keep him from following. You know this, yes?”

“Intimately. You’ll have to get in line, after me.”

She hands him cuffs and he latches them together. Clint can get out of them, but not without Phil noticing, and yes, he can plan an escape sedated, but not a very good one; Phil will have time to stop him and it’s not as though Natasha isn’t also watching, once she returns from a quick trip to retrieve Clint's stuff and bring it with them. It's nothing particularly traceable—no bow, for one—but still, she seems to think he might want to know he has things of his own, and Phil doesn't disagree.

“Come on,” Nguyen-Mills says. “We have a jet sitting in a field up the road, and I have a report to file.”

By the time they get back to HQ, Clint’s tried to get out of the cuffs twice and opened a new gash over Phil’s left eyebrow, but all of them agree this is Clint trying to survive, and take it as a positive sign.

* * *

Thirty days is a long time. Too long, although Phil certainly has plenty of ongoing PT to keep working on and months of paperwork to catch up, so he limits himself to a hour twice a day visiting Clint.

It’s not, technically, a prison, but Clint _is_ very locked down at HQ behind force fields and inside an area—this is Phil’s doing, and he kind of hated himself for giving Clint up this way, but he had to be sure he’d stay safe—in which the ventilation system has both motion sensors and a separate intake from the rest of the level. 

Except for the times he has medical engagements of his own (they’re unavoidable; his doctor is a little pissed he hared off to Texas before he finished the tail end of the reconstructive work) Phil shows up every day, seven days a week, at ten and six, and lets himself in.

In the mornings, they share coffee—often literally, sipping out of a single cup that’s too sweet for Phil but he will drink it every day for the rest of his life if Clint wants—and in the evenings it’s suppertime, whatever’s good from the canteen or whatever Phil brought.

They talk, of course, about what Clint’s working on (a lot of talk therapy; a lot of journaling; a lot of time with video and analysis thinking through his choices and his rationales; also a fair amount of time with electrodes on his head while they map out how Loki changed him and whether it matters to his physiological responses), and about Phil’s PT (less interesting; more sweaty—not that Clint’s not also doing all the calisthenics he can wedge in around the rest). The mystery of Clint’s hallucinations is cleared up the first time Phil’s doctor puts him under for another (minor) surgery; he’d warned Clint he’d miss the evening and shows up the next morning to a significant freakout about the forty minutes Phil had been there anyway, entering and leaving without benefit of door. When Phil is unconscious, apparently he manifests to Clint, and maybe it’s permanent. Fortunately since Phil doesn’t remember a thing and hadn't been expecting a problem, Clint had just started another round of sensors on his head when it happened, and the data clearly show that this is Loki-related, the asshole. 

The second time he goes in for another cleanup surgery, now that they know, Clint just tells Phil the next morning that by the way, they had makeup sex; he hopes Phil doesn’t mind.

Smartass. Phil is so glad to see this part of Clint again he almost has to leave and compose himself. Except that they’re working on honesty, and so he does his composing right there while he laughs.

They also touch, a lot, leaning toward each other at the table or with Clint’s feet in Phil’s lap on the couch. And finally, in the last week when Phil has arrived, Clint’s stood and come to him on his own to draw him close and start the conversation. No prompting, no wary sidelong looks, no shuffling of his feet. Phil’s become used to all of these things again, all these old tells that Clint doesn’t feel safe, tells they’d trained out of him once and Phil isn’t entirely convinced it’s the right thing to train out of him again. Or rather, he wants that because he wants him to be whole and hale, but he has this lingering sense that the physical evidence of insecurity is the only way he’ll know if (when?) Clint is going to bolt again, and the notion of letting him loose in the world without that kind of signal scares Phil. Kind of to death. What if he fools them into thinking he’s okay when he’s not?

But it’s not his call. He has the proxy, and in fact twelve days ago Clint had asked him to bring a new form because he wanted to sign it again, now, just to show that still, always, he intended to trust Phil. He also asked, of his own volition, for a second therapist, not because he didn’t like the first one but because he wanted a second opinion, to be sure he _wasn’t_ fooling anyone about his progress. All his walls are down, flattened to bedrock, while he works with the therapists and the doctors, and when Phil visits, even though it means he’s routinely tearier than he’s happy about and sometimes he has to admit to fears or say angry words that make him cringe in fear of rejection.

Phil is never going to reject him again, which means he’s also spending a lot of time with a shrink of his own, learning how to tell the truth even when he knows it will make Clint afraid he will, and working on his own issues that set this whole thing off.

Today, though, is day thirty, and that’s the end of his stint, according the initial paperwork. It’s not so much that SHIELD actually hews to the same rules as the outside world about what constitutes rehabilitation, about timeframes or definitions of stability. Phil could sign off on a longer term, because, see previous, he’s still Clint’s proxy; however, he doesn’t want to. He wants the trust to go both ways.

And he wants Clint to come home.

And he wants to have never been such a fucking insecure idiot in the first place. God, if he could only go back and kick himself in the teeth. 

“You look good,” he says after Clint steps back from a greeting hug and a peck on the cheek.

“Feel pretty good,” Clint says. “They started easing off the drugs last night.” He’s been on mood stabilizers, which he has always hated, but which he’s been taking religiously because after a few days of talking, he’s said that until they got far enough for the talking to work, he wanted the help. He wants to be the man he was. Phil doesn’t feel like being proud is really something he has the right to, but it’s a lot like how he felt when Clint started unscrambling the psychological mess of his youth the first time. He’s so damn brave, and it’s no wonder Loki chose his heart. Still, now he has to cope without chemical assistance, and Phil isn’t sure he’s ready.

And still, it’s not his call. If Clint can be brave, Phil is going to have to fake it until he makes it, too.

“Oh?” he asks.

“Yeah. Because I want to come home. Wait, no. I want _you_ to come home.”

It’s the first time they’ve talked about the apartment they used to share. It hasn’t come up, somehow, in fifty-six hours of conversation. Phil licks his lips. “I was hoping you felt that way,” he says.

“Yeah?” Clint’s smile is genuine and it breaks Phil’s heart a little, but it also makes him stand a little taller.

“Of course.”

“Awesome. I signed myself in for another couple of weeks, but after that…”

“You did?”

“Told you. Started weaning, and like it or not—and I don’t and this might make you laugh yourself sick, but it’s safer for me to do this here, and we can’t start again if you’re stuck worrying about me from the very first minute.” Clint hauls Phil over to the couch and sits down with him. “Also, I don’t really want to put on a show for the monitors or anything, but can I kiss you?”

“You never asked, before?”

“I never wanted to make sure you didn’t think you were taking creepy advantage of an incapacitated mess who was overly dependent on you before.” Clint pauses. “Uh, I mean, I wasn’t always incapacitated, but I was always kind of a mess without you, and I was always overly dependent.”

“Right,” Phil says, his tone not sharp enough to be sarcastic but certainly disbelieving. “You were pretty nonfunctional without me. I mean, before Loki, when you were the one who looked after me all those times, or when you were leading other teams, or when you went on dates—”

“No dates,” Clint says. “Just hanging out. I didn’t—it’s okay that you did but that wasn’t anything I was doing.”

Phil sighs. “All I did was hurt you, and still, you were not, as you call it, a mess.”

“Oh, I really was.” Clint leans in close. “I just pretended better before you died than I did after. I mean always. I learned a lot from Psych, but mostly what I learned was how to look like a functional human, not how to stop being afraid. I was always, always afraid. But you’re not answering the question.”

“The kissing question?”

“Yeah.”

“First, though, you were? Always afraid?”

“Of losing you? Of fucking up this awesome life I had? Every day. Every hour. You didn’t know?”

“You never said.”

“And then I did lose you, and it sucked, and I just focused on how to be the guy you’d want back, but that didn’t really work, so I started trying to learn how not to be afraid. For the record, that also didn’t work until Loki helped. I don’t really recommend his treatment. Kissing now?”

Phil feels sick. “How can you even want me to _be_ here?”

“Um, because I love you? Here’s what I did learn: I should say that every time because I might not get to again. Also, because I know, for sure, what losing you feels like, and I’m done with it. If you want not to be here, you should say, but I definitely, _definitely_ want you here.”

“Are you—“

“Extremely sure I want to kiss you? And keep you and stuff? So very. Also, if I have to wait much longer I’m going to traumatize the folks watching the video because I’ll have so much pent-up neediness I won’t be able to control it.” Clint ducks his chin and looks up through his lashes. “That’s a lie,” he says softly, “because of course I’m the one in charge of my own mouth, but you seemed to not quite believe me so I figured a little hyperbole to convey what I wanted was in order.”

“Hyperbole, huh?” The thing is, Phil _does_ feel sick that he didn’t understand how badly he was fucking up—he thought he did, but he was wrong—until right this minute, but he’s still amazed and proud and astonished by who Clint has managed to be, twice now, from scratch, with nowhere near enough help from him. “Hyperbole.”

“Hey, I have big words.”

“Oh, I know.” Phil draws Clint’s chin up with two fingers, not just because he wants to fix that failure to help, but also because Clint knew who they both were a long time ago and he’s still right, and nods. “And I don’t deserve you, but kissing sounds amazing.”

“Thank God.” Clint surges forward and presses his lips to Phil’s, opening up immediately and tasting him, tugging at his lip and nibbling until Phil shifts and goes over backward. Clint follows, catching himself on the arm of the couch and shifting them so he can get a knee between Phil’s thighs and drop down to lie flush with him.

Phil is sorely tempted to forget the video monitors himself, but then, he hasn’t kissed Clint in months and before that in a couple of years, and it turns out making out on the couch like teenagers is better than anything else he’s done all week.

He stays past seven, but doesn’t care, and when he leaves, lips swollen and sore and a little bit raw, he’s not in any way sorry. When he gets back to his office, he contacts logistics about his stored belongings, and by ten, he has the forms filled out to re-cohabitate.

In the morning, he brings Clint a copy to sign, which he looks through while they hand their coffee back and forth, and he scribbles his name on and sets down the cup. 

They have more making out to do.

* * *

It’s been one hundred fifty-six weeks, four days, since Phil stood at this door considering the words he was going to say, how he was going to get Clint to understand, what the strategy should be, and this time, it’s even scarier.

Although at least this time, he thinks he probably isn’t being unfair. He lets himself in and closes the door behind him, and watches Clint glance up from his puzzle—a habit he says he lost while Phil was gone, but that he’s taken back up again, inkpen and all—and smile.

“Hey,” he says. Then he frowns. “You okay?”

Phil clears his throat. “Uh, I was hoping we could talk? Not like the last time I said that.” They’ve only been home for a couple of months, and while everything is good—is amazing, in fact—the memory of saying he wanted to talk, that’s never really going to go and it still feels so fresh after all the time away that came between.

“Well good, since for one thing I would be harder to get out the door and for another I’d call Nat before I ever left.”

Phil chuckles, nervous and a little embarrassed. “No, that won’t be necessary. It’s just—“

Clint puts down his paper and pen and holds out his arms wide. “Come talk here.”

Phil’s feet start across the room, and then he stops short, six feet from Clint and just outside the pool of light from the end table lamp. “No, I want to do this from here.”

Clint stands. “Okay, I’ll come to you.” He’s there before Phil can react, and Phil shakes his head as Clint’s arms come around him. “What’s up?”

Phil starts to step back, but of course, that’s only going to make them both tense, and so he thinks better of it. “So, I was going to do this right with kneeling and everything, but now that you’re here…”

“Hey, blowjobs are always welcome.” He says this as though they aren’t still working on bringing trust back into bed. They are, and yes, they have sex, but it never feels casual and it never feels fun, quite yet. Lightening up is on their agenda for soon.

Phil clears his throat again. “Check my right pocket?”

“Ooh, toys?” Clint reaches in Phil’s pocket and finds the little box. “Um.”

“Blowjobs sound great, but what I was going for was, marry me?” Phil takes the box and opens it between them. “Um, I assumed no diamonds, but if you want diamonds I will buy you a hundred.”

“You… marry you?”

“I feel like maybe it’s too soon? But I didn’t want to wait another year.” Phil waits while Clint works out the date and realizes it’s been three years on the dot. “But you don’t have to like my reclamation of the day.”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, I’d have married you then, or before then, or since then, or now. When?”

“When do you—“

“Now. Immediately. Can we get Fury to just declare it?”

“Uh.” Phil considers and then says, “Well, the carrier’s still in drydock, but we have to have _some_ kind of ship with a captain somewhere.”

Clint thinks for a second, then pulls out his phone and texts someone. “Yeah, we really do.” His phone buzzes, and he grins at it. “Cap says he would love to make us official. Give him an hour, and we’re on. They’ll send a chopper to pick us up.” 

“You called Steve Rogers to—“

“Oh hell yes. He’s the team leader, and I’m calling it good enough. Whatever boat he finds, he’ll make sure the legit captain signs off too.”

“You’re ridiculous. And a chopper is definitely a misuse of resources.”

“Don’t fucking care, and if I’m ridiculous I’m also right—don’t even try to tell me that having the explicit blessing of your childhood hero, whose awakening started fixing us before that asshole came along and exploded everything, doesn’t make things more perfect.”

“That would require me to concede that anything is more perfect than you marrying me, but I see your point.”

“Knew you would.” Clint looks down at his jeans and hoodie, then at Phil’s suit. “I’m underdressed.”

“You’re fine.” Phil pulls Clint close and kisses him. “I don’t give a shit what you’re wearing.”

“Yeah, but I wanna be pretty.” Clint kisses Phil one more time and pulls away. “I’ll be ready in twenty.”

Phil pulls him back in. “You need twenty, but we have an hour? Maybe blowjobs are on the table after all.” 

Clint chuckles and pulls Phil back toward the couch. “Maybe so.”

Fine, so the chopper has to wait a little bit for them to finish getting cleaned up. Phil can’t really bring himself to mind.

* * *

The wedding is perfect, partly because Steve told Stark told Pepper, and partly because in Thor’s absence Jane (and therefore Darcy Lewis), showed up to help. 

An hour and a half, Phil notes, is apparently entirely enough time for Pepper and Darcy to collectively organize, badger, and/or humiliate the entire complement of a military vessel (borrowed from the Navy) into banners and music and a dance floor. It’s both impressive and terrifying. Also, well over two hundred guests show up, including the expected (Nick. Natasha. Maria. Jasper. Felix Blake.) and a lot of people one or both of them has worked with but Phil never realized would have expected to attend (Jardin. Kyle Williams, now engaged to Kuriya because they got close during her recovery. Rumlow. Ahmbareiya, now attached to the Rio office as fifth in command. Carter. Cheryl Stephens from the armory. Whistler from the ’09 Barcelona mission. Stowell, who’s shouldn’t know Phil’s alive, but keeping personnel assignments and rosters a secret from the quartermaster’s office is fundamentally impossible). Just about everyone they know that’s level seven is there, nearly half of them in field gear that suggests they dropped what they were doing just to make it. Phil’s touched, and Clint, looking around to see that a _lot_ of the ‘carrier’s leadership complement is here, suppresses a shiver and stands tall.

But none of that is what makes the day. All Phil needs, turns out all he _ever_ needed, was Clint repeating his vows, voice thick and eyes bright, putting a ring (where did he get one? Phil sees him nod at Stark—oh.) on Phil’s finger, and then snarking his way through an awkward dance while everyone stares. Clint is an athlete and a performer and Phil’s seen him dance many times so the awkwardness is strange, but being watched… in the context of SHIELD, he’s a sniper. Eyes on him is nerve-wracking. But he’s smiling, and so it’s fine. Everything is fine.

By the time Natasha enlists Melinda May takes them home (Quinjet. So far beyond misuse of resources, Phil can’t even comment), Phil’s exhausted and Clint is quiet, but both of them are grinning ear to ear.

* * *

“Two months, huh?” Phil looks at the orders over Clint’s shoulder. “Two months in the desert?”

“Yeah, well, someone’s gotta. You gonna miss me?”

Phil slips a hand through between Clint’s waist and elbow to snag the phone, then spins him with the other hand. “Always. You?”

“Oh please. I’ll be fine. After all we know how well I do when you aren’t around. … How do you feel about weekly surgeries?”

Phil snorts. “No.” 

“Nothing major. Just, you know, appendectomy one week, armpit plastics the next…”

“ _Armpit_ plastics?”

“What? I like your face the way it is. And your shoulders, arms, torso in general. And your ass. And your—“

Phil interrupts him with a kiss, then he leans their foreheads together. “Seriously, is this going to work?” It’s the first extended mission either of them has been on and despite that they’ve been apart for days here and there without a problem (and despite that Clint is whole and healthy again, and definitely cleared for this kind of duty), Phil can’t help but worry.

“It’s going to be fine,” Clint says. “I get to come home to you. I get to call. There’s Skype. There’s email which this time you will _answer_. Also, you’re not dead.”

“I know. Still.”

Clint purses his lips and pulls away from Phil’s forehead. “Well I mean, you could always reinforce my good memories. Ship out in five days, so I bet we could have a lot of sex in that time.”

“Oh, could we?”

“Oh, yeah.” Clint puts his hands at Phil’s waist and grips a little with his fingers. “What should we do first?” He rocks Phil’s hips a little, then grins. “We could take turns choosing.”

“I’m going to like whatever you pick.”

“Duh.”

Phil goes with the rocking/twisting motion Clint’s set up, amplifying it a little. “So dancing, then?”

“On the table. No, not dancing on the table,” he amends when Phil’s glance slides off him to the kitchen. “Dork.” His hands loosen and lay flat on Phil’s flanks, then slide on around to pull them close and grope Phil’s ass. “Follow my lead?”

Phil doesn’t bother answering that, just leans into Clint’s kiss and lets himself be maneuvered toward the bedroom. It still amazes him every time, how intently Clint focuses on him—it’s not new; this was true before and it’s true now, but Phil is always struck by it—and how easy it is for him to lose himself in it. It’s only recently that he’s realized that part of what he feared, before, was how _well_ they fit together—and how ridiculous that is.

“Okay?” Clint murmurs, and Phil realizes that once again he’s considering the nature of their connection rather than living in the moment, and he chuckles at himself.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” He pulls back long enough to start working on his buttons and watching Clint pull his t-shirt over his head. “You?”

“Better than fine. Awesome.” Clint unbuttons the top button of his jeans and then steps back in, bare-chested, to slid his hands up under Phil’s undershirt. His fingers find ticklish spots, because they always do, but they also find the scar on his chest as Clint pushes the shirt up and out, and for the first time, Phil doesn’t feel funny about that scar being part of their story. Maybe they really will be okay.

  
[](http://tinypic.com?ref=20rwpiw)

**Author's Note:**

> [The art post, so you can go comment to the artist if you like.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2536208)


End file.
